


Come to Me at My Worst

by anamatics



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18830620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: A rebirth, after a departure.





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> _In the focus I'll be coming_  
>  In the focus I'll be waiting  
> In the focus I'll be dreaming  
> In the focus I'll be something better yet

_Things you never said at all – 1.6 k_

They cannot occupy the same space. It’s part of their game, their ships passing in the night, always a near collision, never a shipwreck.

 _You won’t survive this, Eve_.

Carolyn has noticed it, as has Hugo. They ask why she’s so obsessed with Villanelle, why she sits up until all hours connecting fragments in her mind together into a spider’s web of assumption about the woman. She does not  _know_  Villanelle, they say, she cannot know her for there is nothing to know of her. Look no further than Moscow for proof. 

 _But… I could know her_.

The _could_ alone is a labyrinth of possibilities.

It is the could which has the rage crawling out of her throat in a wail, the could which has tears of frustration stinging at the corners of her eyes. It is the could which drives her to lose hours obsessing, drives her to dig her nails so hard into her palm there are four perfect half-moon shaped cuts in her palm when her mind comes back to her later.

Niko asks if she’s alright when he sees them. Eve doesn’t answer, sitting on the sofa staring down at the blood, tea stone cold in her hand and ringing in her ears so loud she does not hear him as he repeats her name over and over again before throwing up his hands and walking out of the living room. He’ll be gone in a few hours – off on to Oxford with fucking Gemma and her pretty lips so eager to be wrapped around his cock.

It is humiliating – the twisting ulcer of disappointment.

 

Niko leaves. Eve never expected him to stay. Not when he had a community of which she was not really a part. That was the thing – he was her’s but she had never been his. Not in the same way. Not in the way Eve thought their wedding vows had meant.

When she find out he's staying at Gemma’s it is confirmation enough, a knife the gut and entirely unexpected. Well, unexpected form Niko. She finds Carolyn and asks to take the day off to collect herself. Carolyn tells her no. “Work though these petty humiliations, Eve, and quickly. We don’t need to deal with you crashing and burning. Not with so much at stake. We’ve just gotten in an report of another rogue operative in town – this one is--”

Eve is not Icarus though – Niko isn’t her sun and she isn’t foolish enough to believe he’s her anything anymore. She is unmoored – a ship fast approaching a wreck – holes and all. Eve prays Niko won’t find out when the crash happens. She can’t endure the shame.

“I’m taking the day off,” Eve says, more forcefully. “I’ll be in tomorrow. The case will keep.”

Carolyn’s face is oddly surprised, but she nods, tight-lipped and unspeaking. Eve knows her expression barely hiding her judgment. Eve doesn’t care. She can’t be at work today, cannot be around these people.

On her way out, she sends a text and asks for something she cannot articulate. It is the only thing she can think to do.

 

The shipwreck comes with the same fraught precision of Eve’s practiced being. When the woman in her kitchen is not her husband and Eve wants nothing more than to slide into a hole in the ground to escape the surge of bile in her throat and the burden of obligation to vows her husband refuses to keep. She could – they could – it has been offered before.

“We shouldn’t keep meeting like this.” Villanelle picks at an invisible piece of lint on her jacket pocket. It is affected nervousness, her hands are steady and her eyes are too wide – to innocent to be anything but Satan’s kiss. “The neighbours will talk.”

Eve, who has always hated her neighbours and their yappy dog and squalling baby, shrugs. They’ve been out of town for a week regardless, but it is the implication of this – of being seen with Villanelle as somehow disreputable – which has her teeth on edge. She cannot show it, cannot let the first point be scored so easily. Not when she is so vulnerable.

Villanelle moves closer, peering down her nose at Eve as though she’s inspecting prey. “You don’t care?” There’s an intrigued tone in her voice, a spark of something not quite excitement: a dare, Eve decides. A dare to see how far they’re willing to take this.

“You enjoy an audience,” Eve’s teeth are on edge. She doesn’t budge from her spot, watching Villanelle’s lips blossom into a wide smile. Victory is dancing in her eyes, in the way they’re crinkled at the edges, giving her youthful face a mature mask. Eve scowls, looks down at her hands. “Gloating is unflattering.”

“So is dressing like a homeless person,” Villanelle says simply, and steps back, far enough away from Eve that she has space to breathe again. “I hear depressed people do that – to hide themselves away.”

Bristling, Eve turns to put the kettle on. “I’m not depressed.” She jabs the lever down a little harder than she anticipated and water sloshes out of the electric kettle.

There’s a beat then, when Villanelle moves to get down mugs and collect the tea from the tin where Eve keeps it on the counter. She’s familiar with the layout of Eve’s kitchen, familiar enough to be  _helpful_. Eve’s hands grip the loose fabric of her pant legs and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from yelling about it.

_This time you let her in._

Villanelle sets to mugs before Eve. “Your husband left you,” she points out.

“He was having an affair.”

“So? He still left. Most people—” and what Villanelle doesn’t say but certainly implies is the  _normal_  part of that sentence. Because Eve doubts Villanelle would react any differently than she’s doing now: contemplating violence and blunting her emotions to numbness. “—would be upset.”

The kettle clicks off, shaking with the force of the water boiling within it. Eve closes her eyes and exhales. She won’t give the satisfaction of a reaction. Not to this. “I shouldn’t have asked you here.”

The pout Villanelle affects then looks almost sincere, which was a sure sign it wasn’t. “Were you lonely?”

Eve doesn’t answer. She makes the tea and hands Villanelle a mug, ignoring the inquisitive tilt to Villanelle’s head. There’s something in the way she holds her mug of tea so delicately that makes Eve want to smack it up into her face just to shatter the image. Eve hates the violence that comes to her in these moments. The raw frustrated anger at herself – at Niko – at this whole situation which threatens to bubble forth at any moment is another sign.

 _Christ_ , there are so many.

She goes to sit on the sofa in the living room, leaving Villanelle alone in the kitchen. Her hands cup the mug that’s too hot to be cradled. It’s a cheap thing they picked up at Tesco years ago and still somehow haven’t broken. She’d given Villanelle the nicer one – a handmade gift from a cousin who’d taken to pottery as a hobby. The thin ceramic channels heat, scalds her hands Eve does not flinch. She stares straight ahead, at the black television screen and wonders if she should put on a movie. Would that be weird? She just wants to not think for a while, but to not be alone either.

“You’re the only one I want to be around right now.” The admission hurts, but it’s crawled its way from her throat and once said, the weakness it expresses is out there to be exploited. “And…and I don’t know why.”

Villanelle comes to stand by the side of the sofa, her expression is unreadable. She sets her mug down on a coaster that’s discarded on the coffee table and straightens, shrugging off her blazer and draping it over the back of a kitchen chair. She moves with care, settling herself next to Eve. Eve notices her care, notices how she does not touch, does not get too close. She picks up the Roku remote and stares at it, as though making a decision.

Eve inhales, chest tight, waiting for the cutting comment to come.

“What movie channels do you have?” It is said softly, Villanelle isn’t looking at her, her eyes straight ahead.

“Um, the iPlayer and Netflix.” Eve blinks. She gestures to the TV. “Did you want to… er…”

Villanelle clicks the television on and opens up the iPlayer app, clicking though the screens quickly until she settles on something French and black and white. Eve hums her approval, as she’s been meaning to watch that one since it got added a few weeks ago, and Villanelle starts the film.

 

After, Villanelle is leaning on her shoulder, fingers playing with the fringe on the throw blanket she’s pulled over herself and half of Eve. “I don’t ever get to watch movies with people,” she confesses. Her tone is soft and far-off.

Eve is still cupping her mug, now stone cold and half gone. “No one I know… likes the movies I like.” The confession hurts. Niko and the rest of their – _his –_ friends don’t understand Eve’s obsession with Noir as a genre, nor her indulgence in war documentaries. They find themselves grounded in stale comedy and drama so saccharine it hurts Eve’s head to think about. And don’t get her started on the superhero movies…

“When you feel lonely, do you want to watch movies with me?” There’s something so innocent and gentle about the way Villanelle asks the question. She’s afraid, Eve realizes, of shattering this… whatever it is between them. Or she thinks Eve wants to see she’s nervous about this. Don’t the books always say the best lies have elements of truth in them?

“I… I think I would like that.”


	2. ii

_Things you said when I was crying –_

Despite having recruited Villanelle to  ~~kill her~~  help with the Aaron Peele case, Carolyn has found something else for them to do with their time after the disastrous dinner meeting while they wait for another angle in on Aaron Peele.  Villanelle is still playing American and playing friends with Amber, Eve still sits in the coffee shop in Bloomsbury and tries not to scowl too deeply as Villanelle entices Amber into the gay bookshop across the street after their AA meeting. Villanelle listened this time, _thank god_ , and didn’t really speak except to chime in that sometimes her temper drove her to behave badly along with the rest of the room. It is a welcome break from Eve’s heart beating out of her chest as Villanelle presented little kernels of truth along with the elaborate lie they’ve concocted.

Carolyn is interested in a new case, her attention on the Peele situation is fleeting except for the pressing fear of the technology he controls getting out and into the wrong hands. Eve’s been treated to enough of Carolyn’s double speak at this point to know they are teetering on the precipice of a disaster larger than the mess Cambridge Analytica caused, but she also understands the delicacy of the situation. “Long game,” she’d said to Villanelle when she’d finally returned after storming out of Aaron Peele’s Richmond home. “That’s what we’re interested in here. The IPO is coming up, but there is time yet before we are forced to…  _act._ ”

Villanelle had tilted her head and regarded Carolyn like she was a particular fascinating crack in the sidewalk. Eve wondered if Villanelle was intentionally trying to look as bored as possible, or if she was, as Konstantin suggested mildly in the van coming back that night, angry. “I don’t like her.” Villanelle answers. “She is a child and her brother is set on keeping her that way.”

Eve and Konstantin exchanged a long look before they both look to Carolyn. The woman’s smile was a small snarl at her lips, tight lipped and unreadable. Eve wondered if she was going to say something harsh. Carolyn was so good with a cutting remark to strip the body bare and revelled in exposing weakness. “What you did to Aaron Peele showed her you would fight for her.”

 _Well,_  Eve thought _, I certainly wouldn’t go that far._

“It’d behove us to continue to nurture your relationship with her.”

Carolyn’s pronouncement is why Villanelle is leading Amber Peele in flicking through the romance novels tucked in the back of Gay’s the Word and giggling through the naughty bits. Eve rolls her eyes as Villanelle starts to read a particularly lewd passage aloud – for Eve’s benefit, she’s sure. She likes an audience, a consummate performer.

Eve chews on her fingernail and flips through the new case, trying not to think about how Villanelle has been over three times this week to just sit on the sofa and watch movies with her. They don’t really talk, Eve cooked pasta one night, Villanelle bought take away curry the next with a bottle of wine they didn’t really drink. After things had gone so wrong in Richmond, Eve had though she wouldn’t turn up. The house was deafeningly silent that night and had Eve sitting on the stairs her phone between her fingers and tears streaked down her face, a text to Niko typed out as she contemplated sending it.

Villanelle had turned up with her wig and clothes in a backpack that didn’t look like it belonged to her, set them by the door and had taken Eve’s phone out of her hands without a word, setting it on the railing and pulling Eve into the kitchen without a word. She’d made the tea that night and the tension had come off of her in waves.

“You cannot expect me to work when you’re in my ear, Eve,” Villanelle’s expression was carefully still. “I could not think; it was … annoying.”

“Forgive me for doing my job.”  

 “I didn’t think it would be, you know? Hearing you in my head. I thought it would be nice. Like this.” Villanelle reaches across the space between them, touches Eve’s upper arm with hesitantly, before her grip became solid. Eve tried not to jerk away. She was still holding her mug of tea; a spill would break this moment – whatever it was. “Don’t do it again.”

“Why?” Eve asked, setting the tea down and so much stepping into Villanelle’s almost painful touch but rather moving so the line of her was not quite so rigid – where Villanelle didn’t look so brittle. Eve wondered if Villanelle had a breaking point – wondered if she could get Villanelle do that point – wondered if that made her crazy. “We’re working together now.”

Villanelle smiled prettily at Eve, but the hardness in her eyes did not fade. The challenge was there, in the slight narrowing of Villanelle’s eyes and the way her eyebrows twitched downward making her face look shadowed. “I do not want to be angry at you.”

It was not so much an answer as a threat. Eve had shrugged and headed to the couch, knowing it wasn’t worth it to pursue it further. She’d let Villanelle pick the movie that night. This one was American, and one she’d seen before. Eve sat drinking her tea as Villanelle relaxed beside her, the tension rolling off of her subsiding as she watched Lawrence Tierney flirt with Clair Trevor.

Her phone pings, Eve is pulled from her thoughts on that evening, from how very warm Villanelle is when she gets close, and from how Eve thought it was nice. Eve sets down the case file and flips it over to see a text from Niko. Her heart races and she sucks in a deep breath. Niko hasn’t texted her since he left. She’s texted him, called him, but he hasn’t answered. When she saw him at Gemma’s pique over took her and he hadn’t spoken to her since. Probably because he was too busy divesting Gemma of her overly decorated bras, and didn’t that hurt more than it should.

_Are you at home?_

_No_. _Working.  
Why?_

_I’ve post to pick up. And I need my walking boots._

_I’ll bring them over later._

_I’m halfway there already, don’t worry about it._

Eve checks her watch. It’s half four. _Christ_ she’s been sitting in this chair for four hours staring at a case file and not really reading it. Niko will be halfway home – _to the house_ – by now. She can’t beat him back at this rate. But she… doesn’t want him to see the two mugs left discarded on the coffee table and the bottle of far more expensive wine than Eve ever buys on the kitchen island. She supposes it doesn’t matter now, and a wave of emotion she cannot articulate hits her. She shreds the napkin that came with her Americano and waits to see if he’ll text again.

Ten minutes later, Eve resigns herself to texting a response.

_Okay._

Niko does not reply. Eve forces herself not to think about it. Reads the case file backwards and forwards. Wonders why Carolyn is on _this_ case of all things. Dead politician’s wife. Suspicious suicide. It isn’t the ghost, as they have her in custody, and Villanelle would never murder so blandly. Eve makes notes and finds herself contemplating the husband, rather than the wife. “Who are you?” she asks, typing his name into google and scowling at the results. Boring. The man works for the Home Office, back bencher, doesn’t have any real power.

“You know, you really should pay more attention. Anyone could sneak up on you.” Villanelle is beside her, drinking the dregs of her coffee and pulling a face at the amount of sugar Eve’s put in it to keep herself awake when the espresso stops working.

Eve inhales. Exhales. “I figured you’d circle back. How was Gay’s the Word?”

“Depressing. Amber has clearly never read a romance novel.” Villanelle’s lips curl and her eyebrows quirk. Eve takes her coffee back sips it on the same side as the stain of Villanelle’s lipstick, unblinking and triumphant as Villanelle’s pupils dilate slightly. This has always been the game – only now it feels like sport. And Eve? For the first time in a long time, Eve wants to compete. “Do you read them?”

“No.” Eve says flatly, setting the file down and marking the date when the boring man joined the home office. “Buy her a good one.”

There’s a beat of silence, before Villanelle leans over and starts to read the file over Eve’s shoulder. “What would be a good one?” It’s an innocent question, if slightly distracted by the casefile. Villanelle’s fingers fan out along the page, she’s reading. Thinking.

“One with better smut than what you read earlier.” Eve answers distractedly.  She taps the file. “Carolyn wants us to look at this.”

“Boring.” Villanelle grumbles.

“I know. The husband works for the home office. I think he may be connected to our funding.”

“Still boring.”

Eve tacks then. “I can look into this on my own, but I thought…you might be interested in doing something other than reading smut for my benefit.”

“I was reading it to Amber.” Villanelle points out. “It is not my fault you insist on listening in.” She gets to her feet, sliding off the stool. She seems to think for a moment before settling on: “Can I see the body?”

“We’ve autopsy photos.” Eve flips back to them in the file and nudges it toward Villanelle.

“I want to see the body, Eve.”

Eve stares at her for a moment. The request isn’t odd so much as it’s a challenge. To see if Eve is really serious about this. Eve inhales. Exhales. Closes the file and jams it into her purse. “We’ll have to hurry if we want to get there before they close at half seven.” When they leave the shop, Villanelle holding the door for Eve, there’s a beat of silence before Eve sighs and adds, “He texted me.”

“What did he want?”

“To make sure I wasn’t at home so he could come over and get his post. Not so much as a by your leave or a how are you.” Eve spits it out and the weight of it _hurts_. She closes her eyes and tries to force the emotions back and away. They – like most things in Eve’s life these days – do not do what she wants them to do and a frustrated tear escapes the corner of her eye.

She hates that she misses him. Hates that a text from him will bring her to tears. She wants these emotions gone, buried, dead and put away in a box to be examined later when it doesn’t hurt anymore. She wishes for the words to say all this, for the words to say all this to _him_ and not to Villanelle, who seems to be the only person who _gets_ what it’s like to feel so betrayed. Villanelle, who is playing at wanting to be there for Eve and who refuses to be anything other than how she’s always been with Eve.

(The worst part of all is that Eve isn’t sure if it’s a game anymore – or if Villanelle actually understands and cares enough to remain present.)

A hand, warm and comforting, comes to rest on the small of her back. “Fuck him,” Villanelle says very quietly. “He does not have the right to do that to you anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definitely playing fast and loose with the 02x06 and 02x07 timelines here because I wanted there to be more space given to Eve breaking up with Niko than there was and because as much as I like the idea of Eve not really caring about the breakup because she's so obsessed with Villanelle, it doesn't really ring true to me. So I'm playing with that space in this - a small 'boring' sojourn with movies and a dead back bencher's wife. Someone call Urquhart.


	3. iii

_Things I said which shocked you - 1.7k_

Villanelle spends an inordinate amount of time staring at the body when Eve talks their way into the morgue at fifteen past seven. They have to be out by eight at the latest, when the last of the doctors will be leaving. Eve stands back, forcing down the hunger which grips her stomach as though she’s eaten nothing in days, at the smell of the body. Villanelle gets close, her nose nearly brushing the dead woman’s marbled skin as she inspects it closely, using her phone’s flashlight as a guide. “She was very healthy,” Villanelle comments, moving down to pull apart the woman’s toes.

Eve steps forward, grabs gloves from the box mounted on the wall, shoves them into Villanelle’s face. “Wear gloves if you’re going to touch.”

Looking at the body, Villanelle raises an eyebrow. “It won’t make any difference to her.”

“The last thing I need is the examiner’s office getting mad at me for contamination of a corpse.” Eve pulls a second pair of gloves from the box and snaps them on.  “I’ll hold the light. What are you looking for?”

Villanelle contemplates this for a moment before shrugging. She turns off the flashlight and pockets her phone, wrinkling her nose and pulling the gloves on. “This is going to dry out my hands.”

“You’ll live.”

Rolling her eyes, Villanelle goes back to her perusal of the corpse’s toes. “Use your phone.”

“Why?”

“It’s my phone.” She purses her lips and waits for Eve to turn on the flashlight on her phone and shine it back between the gap in the woman’s second and third toe. “Maybe I want privacy.”

“Technically, it is MI-6’s phone.” Eve points out. She shines her light into Villanelle’s eyes out of spite and watches as Villanelle’s expression darkens. The change unmoors Eve, sends her stomach flip flopping and makes her want to do it again. Pushing is what she does best – she’d done it with Niko too, only Niko just let it happen, never questioned it. “On loan.”

“Are you going to take it from me, Eve?” The dare is there, an opening salvo across the bow of Eve’s barely restrained panic.

Eve says nothing.

A small smile twitches at Villanelle’s lips, crinkling her eyes at the corners and giving her slight dimples. It is almost smug – or perhaps merely amused – Eve is not certain. Villanelle moves closer, nudging Eve’s wrist with her free hand and prying apart the last two toes. “She has a callus here. A runner.”

“How do you know?”

“I have one too.” Villanelle answers. Eve files the information away, though she supposes it makes sense. Villanelle has to stay fit somehow.  “The skin would be soft here, after a shower or a run. Easy to inject into but as the skin dried the injection mark would be forced closed due to the build-up of the callus.” She bends and exhales on the raised hardened skin, gloved fingers stretching it taut.

There, in the light of Eve’s cell phone flashlight, is a small indentation in the skin. Eve’s eyes widen. She thumbs her phone over to the camera and takes a picture, barely daring to breathe. “How did you know?”

“It is what I might have done, had I examined the options.” Villanelle’s shrug is enough to end the conversation.

 

Villanelle disappears soon after, a text from Amber Peele enticing her out into the city at night. Eve reminds her she’s supposed to be in rehab before she goes. Villanelle gives her a look and informs her that alcohol is a distraction she can ill afford with an eyeroll that screams ‘duh’. Eve takes the Tube home and rocks back and forth in silence, knowing there’s nothing waiting for her there but an empty house. She loses herself in her thoughts and mentally composing case notes for Carolyn in her head to type up when she gets home.

Niko’s tidied the place. Eve notices it immediately upon walking in. His nicer jacket is gone from where it usually hangs by the door, as are his walking boots from the rack. He’s done the dishes, gathering the forgotten mugs from the coffee table, one of which was still stained by Villanelle’s lipstick. It’s seeing them all neatly lined up in the dish drain that sets her off first, the exhilarating knot of excitement and anxiety in her stomach that is Villanelle is gone – dissipating into something that first feels angry and then transitions into sadness.

Standing over her kitchen sink, Eve cries. The hollowness of this house when it’s only her inside of it – the selfsame place as it was before, when things were still good, is too much. To be surrounded by Niko’s things, by memories they built together, is more than Eve can bear.

She climbs the stairs and opens the door to the little-used guest room.  The dust from disuse covers everything, and Eve strips the bed and puts fresh sheets on, gathering her pillows from the master bedroom and the throw from the sofa downstairs. It smells – well, Eve doesn’t think about how it smells like Villanelle’s perfume and the sport deodorant she likes to wear when she’s pretending to be Billie. The wig makes her sweat, she can’t ruin the clothes. Eve goes to sleep not thinking of anything in particular, mind preoccupied with how she cannot stand to be in the same room where she and Niko once celebrated their love.

The room is strange, the light different. Eve sleeps poorly and wakes up with a stiff back and an uncomfortable ache in the pit of her stomach. She stretches, checks her phone to see several messages from Villanelle and none from Niko, and lets herself fall back down on the bed before she allows herself to read Villanelle’s messages – one by one – chronicling the night out she’s had.

 _You’re supposed to be an addict._ Eve types. Before she thinks better of it and watches the cursor obliterate her first instinct – her better instinct. Eve swallows at the loss of control, of knowing this will work if she lets Villanelle relax into Billie; and hating every minute of it. Eve is anxious to know, anxious to know what on earth they could have gotten up to an adventure that involved them taking the NightTube and then an Uber back to Richmond, anxious to know if Villanelle slept with Amber, anxious to know if Aaron Peele has become aware of who Villanelle really is.

_How did it go?_

_Two minutes_ , comes the response.  _I went to Greggs._

Eve, had she not be angry and anxious and sad all at once, could have kissed Villanelle when she shoved a hot to go cup and wrapped bag full of sausage roll into Eve’s hands before slipping past her and into the kitchen. “You’ve cleaned. It was starting to smell a bit.”

“Niko did. Yesterday.” Eve closes the front door. “And it did not smell.” She follows Villanelle, sets her coffee cup down on the kitchen island and moves to get plates down for the sausage roll before deciding against them and getting milk from the refrigerator. Villanelle, Eve has learned, prefers her coffee black. If Eve wants milk, she has to put it in herself, because Villanelle won’t go that far if she’s purchasing them both coffee. “Why did you buy me breakfast?”

“Amber thinks I have a lover,” Villanelle announces just as Eve starts to pour the milk. Eve’s hand slips, milk sloshes from the carton, but thankfully stays in the cup. Eve exhales, meets Villanelle’s gaze evenly, and puts the cap back on the milk. “Her brother showed her some pictures of me with another woman.”

 _What woman?_ Eve thinks. Surely Aaron couldn’t have pictures of them. They’d been so careful, oh so careful, to keep their meetings to a minimum in public places. “Is she jealous?”

“No, I think she is hurt I did not tell her. We are friends, she told me, and friends share secrets about their love lives.” Villanelle shrugged. “Did he clean because he knows you…”

“Don’t –” Eve’s tone is harsh, curt. “Don’t.” She doesn’t want it articulated. Doesn’t want it laid bare that she’s barely functioning as it is and maybe she did need Niko to clean because if he hadn’t she didn’t know when she would have found the energy to do the same. It’s a twisting knife in her gut, one Villanelle sticks in greedily, knowing full well its payback Eve rightly deserves.  

And since when did Villanelle get to be so wise? Since when does she even get to pretend like she cares about Eve’s feelings? Eve’s nostrils flare. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t know me that way, I would never let you.”

“Don’t speak to me that way.” Villanelle sips her coffee, expression as cold as the darkest winter nights of Eve’s childhood in America. The look chilled Eve like those nights, stole the breath from her lungs. “I am not standing in your kitchen because l want to be your punching bag, Eve - for when you are too sad to be anything other than mean. I don’t like you enough for that.”

Eve says nothing. Casts about for something safe. “Why did you go to Greggs?” she asks again.

“I thought you could use breakfast.” The answer isn’t what Eve expected. She’d expected a cheeky admission of guilt, that she’d actually slept with Amber Peele, or that she’d done something else awful. “And because I thought you should know that Amber is aware of you before you left today.””

“Who did you tell her I was?”

“I said you were my girlfriend, Eve.”  The  _obviously_  hangs in the air like the clearing morning fog.

Eve closes her eyes. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“What else was I meant to say? You’re my handler, whispering in my ear when you want me to jump and expecting me to say ‘how high’,” Villanelle looks at her fingernails for a moment. “It might give her the wrong impression.”

“I’m not your handler,” Eve answers. That job is no easier than catching lightning in a bottle – cork it up and you’re stuck with Villanelle’s darkening your doorway commenting on your housekeeping. “I don’t think—what we did – _do_ —would be entirely appropriate if I were.” The words are out and Eve can’t take them back – won’t take them back. Maybe she’s rebounding – maybe she wants to try and do something more. Maybe she just wants Villanelle to sit and be silent while she figures out how to tell Carolyn that the dead body in the morgue was murdered and was not just an unfortunately timed suicide. She sips her coffee and takes a bite of the breakfast Villanelle’s brought her. Her lips curl, the smile emboldens her when Villanelle returns it. “Don’t you think?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that sure was a finale wasn't it? I really enjoyed it. I know it wasn't everyone's favorite.

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's on [that meme bullshit](https://anamatics.tumblr.com/post/184830914072/send-me-a-ship-and-one-of-these-and-ill-write-a) again? It meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
> 
> Thinking this will be like 4-6 parts long.


End file.
